“Hey, can you break this?” Skip pushed past me, waving a fifty-dollar bill. He stopped when he saw Rob wasn’t holding a pizza. “Hey, where’s the ’za?” he wanted to know. Then he looked at Rob’s face, and his eyes narrowed.

“Hey,” Skip said in a different tone of voice. “I know you.”

Ruth had poked her head out from the kitchen doorway. “Did you remember the hot-pepper—” Her voice trailed off as she, too, recognized Rob.

“Oh,” she said in a very different voice. “It’s…it’s…”

“Rob,” Rob said in that deep, no-nonsense voice that had always managed to send my pulse racing—same as, for some time now, the sound of a motorcycle engine had. It’s like those dogs we learned about in Psych. The ones who would only get fed after a bell rang? Whenever they heard a bell ring after that, they’d start drooling. Whenever I hear a motorcycle engine—or Rob’s voice—my heart speeds up. In a good way.

I know. Pathetic, right?

“Right,” Ruth said, darting a worried look in my direction. “Rob. From back home.” She refrained from calling him her private nickname for him: The Jerk. I thought this showed some real maturity and growth. Ruth’s changed a lot since high school.

Well, I guess we all have.

“You remember Rob, Skip,” Ruth said, elbowing her twin. “He went to Ernie Pyle.”

“How could I forget?” Skip said tonelessly.

Okay, well, I guess all of us have changed since high school except for Skip.

“Right,” Ruth said. “Well. Do you, um…do you want to come in, Rob?”

I didn’t blame Ruth for sounding confused and not knowing exactly what to do. I didn’t know what to do, either. I mean, a guy walks out of your life for a year, only to reappear on your doorstep in another state…It’s kind of disorienting.

“What’s the holdup?” Now Mike was crowding into the tiny front hallway. He hadn’t seen Rob yet. “You guys need change or something?”